A spot welder heats the joint itself by passing a large current (the less connected, the higher the electrical friction), These igniters will only create heat on the outside surfaces of the joined material so I doubt you’ll be happy with the results.

This is a good application, grippers generally, and grippers with sense built-in. Optical sensors and capacitive sensors can help a griper find its target before knocking over a glass of milk for example, while pressure sensors can balance the fine line between crush and slip.

even more cool; a base board with cap sense transmit, a silicon layer, and a contact layer with cap sense, allowing the base to detect the position of the sense layer, and thus the compression of the silicon /in 3D/ thus providing the critical - is this slipping? feedback.

There is a common thread.
I would build a wrist length arduino with bluetooth, accel, and rgb leds - bt optional for cost. This would allow a platform for wearable input and output with internet access via phone bluetooth, personal pov, hackable con tickets, etc… also useful for small uav/quads with optional gyro, pen electronics, and similar wearable circuits. The real value is a companion suite of popular BOB boards in compatible footprint (Direct board to board soldering for minimal thickness, common I2C bus etc…).

Ironically, the individual micro-controllers aren’t regulated by the FCC.
Neither is cool rendering software - so let’s delete those paragraphs from the argument.

What’s left is a. a real decline in US manufacturing AND innovation (ie Sony)
The “incomplete” caveat is pretty sucky - yeah maybe it leaves some opportunities for Sparkfun, but it cuts out a whole host of small boards which might serve a complete thought.

I think a lot of hobbyists went to the Internet, and now the internet is re enabling hardware hobby.

There are many reasons tech is moving away from the US. the FCC doesn’t need to help push.

Jim,
for clarity - we’re debating the claim that 1. regulation kills innovation generally, and 2. the FCC has killed electronic innovation in the U.S. in particular.

Your argument is that a. I’m a poopyhead. b. the FCC was necessary because people were using huge FR broadcasters, and c. the precise dates don’t coincide neatly.

Let me counter:
a. am not.
b. so let the FCC regulate high powered transmitters at the module level; but don’t require people who integrate the module to require the same testing. And for God’s sake don’t confuse a $.50 micro-controller with a threat to the ionosphere.
c. Remember Zenith, RCA (Radio Corp of America), Heathkit? Radio Innovation declined in the U.S. while it picked up in other countries.

I can promise you there are many people like me who look at the onerous testing requirements for electronics and realize that basically you’re little electronics shops (Sparkfun, adafruit) etc are no different than moonshiners in Appalachia - “ain’t nothing illegal till you get caught.”

Thanks, I don’t think it’s nuanced at all for those small innovators in the US who look at the laws and say - “I’ll apply my skills to something else”; and every time one experimenter stops buying a transistor or an LED; the market for those parts dries up, and in the end, even if one were determined to use a transistor and go to jail; he’d likely have to import that transistor from malaysia.
It’s an irony that weed is more legal than a transistor in CO.

Mike,
the 5th version of Arduino now has FCC testing; you forgot to mention of course that every prior version; but more importantly, that very first Arduino board which carried all the project risk - no FCC thank you very much.

Perhaps you don’t understand project risk; but not every microcontroller board is going to make a killing - so a lot of people have to take risks, and if you add that million dollar FCC fine to the pile of risks, you can squash an industry, or at least that corner of it labelled “Small Business”

You have a job today because some college student took a risk in his dorm, including the risk of being pitchforked by the FCC (don’t even pretend Nate was testing those boards he cooked on the electric grill). Yeah maybe Sparkfun tests a board or two today; but my point is you can’t build an Arduino nor a Sparkfun out of whole cloth; both of them must go through the “illegal” period when compliance with the FCC is simply too high a price to pay for the 100 odd boards they make in the early days. Without small business you don’t get to big. I’m suggesting the FCC doesn’t fit small business and is contributing to the foreignness of innovation. You disagree in words, but your “argument” is evidence to the contrary.

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